


Heliocentric Theory

by starfleetblues



Series: Theories of the Universe [2]
Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, F/M, I AM SORRY, M/M, idk man, it's complicated - Freeform, this is painful
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-05
Updated: 2013-12-05
Packaged: 2018-01-03 13:56:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,646
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1071249
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starfleetblues/pseuds/starfleetblues
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Bones? Are you okay?” Jim’s worried that Bones is sick, because Bones is always the one squeezing tighter, kissing harder, as if he’s afraid of losing Jim.</p>
<p>“I need to talk to you.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Heliocentric Theory

**Author's Note:**

> Thank deepthroatnine and redford for convincing me to continue this series. I actually have ideas for more parts now, so here we go, on another series. My other one still isn't finished!  
> This one's kind of a mess of relationships and all kinds of crap, just a warning.  
> As always, I own no part of the Star Trek universe, including these characters below.

Bones spends his entire summer with Jim. It doesn’t matter where they were or what they were doing, because Bones loves spending time with Jim and Jim was in love with Bones.

He says it one hot summer afternoon, when they were curled in Jim’s bed together, fingers interlaced after a round of sex in the heat.

“Bones?”

“Yeah, Jim?”

“I think I love you.” Jim’s voice is barely audible.

“Good, because I love you too, darlin’.” Bones reaches over to kiss Jim lightly, and they lay there for several more hours, lazily trading kisses and playing with hair.

 

Jim’s first day back is as crazy as ever, and he finds himself hoping that no one will come in and offer to be his TA, because to him, that spot will always belong to Bones. After four classes in a row, he finally has a free period, and collapses into his chair after four hours of reviewing the syllabus and summarizing the aspect of the class. He checks his phone and texted Bones quickly. ‘First day is hell. Miss you already. How’s college?’

Bones evidently isn’t in class, because he replies quickly. ‘Do you miss me more as your TA or boyfriend? College is boring so far, but we’ll see. I think I could finish pre-med in two years. These all seem like reviews for me.’

‘I miss you as both. I say go for finishing pre-med asap, that way you can move home sooner. How long until your next class?’

‘Half an hour. Is this your free period?’

‘Yep. If I get my other laptop set up, would you be up for Skyping when we have time?’

‘Sounds excellent. I’ve already had my roommate (MS born and bred, homophobic) ask about the photo of us on my desk. I panicked and said you were my teacher.’

‘Not exactly a lie… Are you telling me to stick to that story if he sees us Skyping?’

‘That’d be for the best. I might try to get into a single room. Telling them I’m gay wouldn’t hurt. I applied for a single initially anyway.’

‘Keep me posted. If you get a single, maybe I’ll come visit over a long weekend…’

‘I will definitely let you know ;)’

Jim smiles as he reads the last text, and then drops the phone in his desk as the AP U.S. History teacher, Spock, knocks on the door.

“What can I help you with, Mr. Spock?” Jim asks cheerily.

“I came to inquire if you would like to accompany myself and Ms. Marcus to Carlyle Brewing Company tonight to assist us in welcoming Ms. Uhura to the history department.” Spock’s voice was completely monotone, and Jim remembered why so many students hated being in Spock’s AP class. Nyota Uhura was the new US History and American Government teacher, and Carol Marcus was their Geography and AP European History teacher.

Jim nods. “Yeah, of course. What time?”

“Five pm,” Spock replies, inclining his head and turning on his heel to walk out.

 

Jim enjoys himself, despite Spock’s tight mannerisms and Carol’s attempts to flirt with him. He sends Bones a text before collapsing into bed, wishing the lean body was still there with him to keep him warm. He sleeps worse than he has in a long time, a combination of the alcohol in his system and the lack of Bones in his bed.

 

It goes on like that for a long time. Jim sets up his laptop and video chats with Bones two or three times a week, maybe goes and hits the bar with the physics teacher, Scotty, and goes home alone. He’s miserable, lonely, and slightly drunk more often than both of his previous years combined. There are photos of him and Bones scattered across the house, and he sometimes sleeps with the one on his bedside table hanging loosely from his fingers.

Bones texts him the week before Jim’s own Christmas break to tell him that he’ll be in town soon, and Jim smiles in anticipation of his boyfriend’s visit. Bones shows the next day, during Jim’s lunch hour, and the blond jumps up to hug the college student, who doesn’t return it, for the first time since they’ve met.

“Bones? Are you okay?” Jim’s worried that Bones is sick, because Bones is always the one squeezing tighter, kissing harder, as if he’s afraid of losing Jim.

“I need to talk to you,” the teen mumbles, his eyes not meeting Jim’s because if they do, he’ll cave and won’t say what he needs to. “I can’t do this anymore.”

Jim takes a step back. “What?”

“I- I just, it’s too much, being in a long distance relationship, with a teacher, of all things, and being in school.”

“Are you breaking up with me?”

Bones raises his head from the floor, still avoiding Jim’s eyes. “I suppose I am. I’m sorry, Jim.”

“Fuck you.” Jim’s voice is cold, and he points at the door. “If you were that sorry, you wouldn’t have done this. Just a few months ago, you said you loved me. Get out. I don’t want to see you again.”

 

Jim gets totally shitfaced, and the last comprehensible thought that crosses his mind is “Thank God it’s Friday.” He gets in a bar fight for no reason other than he can, for the first time since college, and his nose gets broken again. He’s taken to the hospital and they allow him to sleep there rather than drive home drunk. When he’s released, he goes home and makes coffee, contemplating it before dumping more booze in it and wallowing in self-misery by watching terrible movies and falling asleep on the couch.

He has tests to finish grading, but he doesn’t. He sees the photo of him and Bones on the mantle, and angrily knocks it over. He stumbles up the stairs in the dark, still wrapped in a blanket, and collapses on his bed. The photo he used to sleep with still rests next to his alarm, and he throws the frame out the door. He grabs his laptop and pens a twenty question quiz on Chinese culture, making them as obscenely hard as he can in his half-drunk/half-hungover state, and falls asleep with the computer still in his lap.

 

He passes the quiz out on Monday, and if his silence and scruffy beard don’t tell the kids that something is wrong, the pop quiz certainly does. He’s never been the teacher to spring a test on you, and he always showed up bubbly and well-dressed. Instead, he’s stoically silent, with bags under his eyes and a three-day beard, wearing jeans and a polo with loafers. He’s nursing a mug of coffee that may or may not be spiked all day, alternating between that and a bottle of water that’s actually vodka, downing a bit of actual water when his head starts to pound just a little too much. Everyone failed the quiz, as he delightfully discovers in his free periods, and he starts writing another one.

He asks Carol out to dinner the next week, just the two of them, after he’s not so drunk and can make it through the day with only the spiked coffee. He shaves and puts his favorite jeans on, grabbing his leather jacket because he feels like feeling badass, and takes her to a fancy restaurant.  They kiss sloppily once or twice, and Jim starts to think that life after Bones might be a thing after all. He avoids movie theaters with her and sleeps with her far sooner than he normally would, but he’s happy for two months. Valentine’s Day passes, and he gives Carol a necklace. She gives him a watch, after his last one broke, and he appreciates the thoughtfulness, convincing himself that it was something Bones never would have done.

He’s happy until at the end of February he gets an email from someone named “Jocelyn Darnell”. Confused, and checking that his antivirus is enabled before remembering that it’s a school computer and he doesn’t really care if it gets a virus, he opens it to find a very emotional note from an Ole Miss student. She details how much Bones (Leo, as she calls him) used to talk about Jim before they broke up, and says that’s how she found his email. She tells Jim that Bones dumped her after Valentine’s Day, and she wants to know how Jim got over him.

Jim flings his wireless mouse across the room and it shatters against the door, startling the students who are working out of the book as he turns the monitor off and stares at the shards of mouse,

He emails her back from home, just two words. ‘I didn’t.’

He sends Bones a text. He’s not sure why he still has the number, but he does. ‘What happened to “I’m gay?” Or did you change your mind about that too at college?’

Bones doesn’t reply. Jim expected nothing less, but he still throws the phone out of the room and steps on it in the middle of the night when he has to use the bathroom.

 

Carol breaks up with him shortly after. Jim’s been avoiding her calls and when they last slept together, she found a photo of Jim and Bones that Jim had missed smashing, hidden in the living room behind a stack of books that Jim piled up when he was asked to do an ACT prep course for the juniors.

“You still love him,” she says gently, placing her hand on his shoulder. “It’s okay, Jim. I understand.” She reaches up on tiptoe to kiss his cheek lightly, and Jim wonders how she knew before he vaguely remembers admitting their relationship when he was drunk one night, and she promised not to tell that they were together before Bones graduated.

 

He half hopes that Bones will show up over spring break, but no luck. Instead, he receives an email from Jocelyn again, telling him that “Leo” apologized and got back together with her (‘Isn’t he such a dear?’), and he gets drunk again. It gets to the point where he loses his job at the school, and he spends the summer applying wherever there’s an opening that isn’t home or Mississippi, for fear of running into Bones. He ends up in Ellensburg, Washington, at the lone high school. He switches to U.S. History from World History, and lives in a small apartment rather than a house. He’s avoiding his past life as much as he can, and he figures that the last place he’ll run into Bones is in a Washington town that’s an hour away from the nearest city of Yakima.

 

He spends six years teaching at Ellensburg High, making friends with algebra teacher Hikaru Sulu and passionate physics teacher Pavel Chekov, and sleeping around a couple of times. He gets drunk only about once a month, and decides that he’ll enter into a serious relationship with Gaila Dunn, a feisty Irish girl he met in the bar. They date for two years before Jim slips and falls on the ice, and shatters his wrist. The walk-in clinic refers him to a local orthopedist, Dr. McCoy at Ellensburg Orthopedic Associates. They book him an appointment for the morning, and Gaila promises she’ll take him, because he’s in no fit state to drive. His arm is in a sling until they can cast it in the morning, so he sleeps on the couch and calls in to work. The nurse who takes him back hangs his x-rays from the clinic on the wall, and then escorts him to radiology, taking two quick images to see if anything has changed overnight. Gaila stays out front, because she’s not big on bones and things, and Jim can’t blame her. He passes the time by playing a game on his phone while he waits, and he finally hears a knock on the door. When it opens, it’s not who he expected. McCoy’s a common name, he convinced himself last night, and they never mentioned a first name. Out of all the doctors in the world, he ends up with the one that’s his ex-boyfriend.

“Bones?” Jim’s jaw drops, because hot damn, the gangly teen he used to know has gotten musclier, and is somehow tanner than he was in Illinois.

Bones runs a hand through his now close-cropped hair as the door swings shut. “Hello, Jim. It’s nice to see you again.”

“I have a shattered wrist,” Jim says dryly. “Is it really that nice?”

Bones cracks a tiny smile. “No, I suppose it isn’t. Not for you, at least.”

Jim clears his throat. “So uh, can we get a cast on this now? I feel like I’m going to fuck it up just in the sling.”

Bones nods and scans the images hanging on the light, and winces. “Well, it’s definitely shattered. Good news is, it looks like everything stayed in line and you won’t have to have surgery, just a cast. I’ll get you down to the plaster room. You’ll have to be careful writing, though.” He remembers Jim being right-handed, and even though it’s common, Jim appreciates the small memory that Bones has clung to.

“I’m ambidextrous,” Jim mentions as he stands up, and Bones just stares.

“Since when? You told me you couldn’t write with your left hand.”

Jim shrugs, and for the first time in almost seven years, his blue eyes meet Bones’ hazel. “It’s been nearly seven years. A lot’s changed, Bones. Including me. I wanted to change everything life had been when I knew you, so I taught myself to write with my left hand as well.”

“I’m married,” Bones tosses out quietly, and Jim sits back down. “Her name’s Jocelyn. We have an eighteen month old daughter. Jaimie.”

Jim just nods. “Good… good for you, kid.”

 

Jim’s cast is a terribly garish yellow. He normally likes yellow, and wear it often, especially because Gaila tells him it looks good with his hair, instead of Bones saying blue looks good with his eyes. But this yellow looks like someone peed in a bucket of plaster, and he grimaces as it sets.

“Should have gone with blue,” Bones says wryly, but Jim doesn’t laugh.

“Do I have to come back?” Jim asks, staring blankly at the floor, and Bones realizes how Jim must have felt when Bones wouldn’t raise his eyes from the floor as his heart breaks.

“Two weeks,” he says finally, and tears a note off. “If you need pain meds or anything, just call. Here’s the office number, and if you need something after hours, this is my cell number.”

Jim just nods and walks away, the note clenched in his left hand.

 

After two weeks, they cut the cast off and take more x-rays, and Jim gets blue when they re-plaster it. He waits for Bones is the exam room again, and this time, Bones comes in much sooner. The wrist is healing on track, but it’ll still be at least another month before he’ll be cast-free. Bones congratulates him on the healing, and they sit in silence for a moment while Bones types notes into the computer. He turns around, and his eyes meet Jim’s again. It’s been too long since Jim’s seen that brown fading to green, and his breath catches. Bones steps forward and wraps his hand in Jim’s unbroken one, and pulls him in for a kiss, seven years, two girlfriends, one marriage and child, and a broken wrist after the last one.

“This time I’m the one not allowed to kiss you,” Bones murmurs when they finally pull apart, and Jim actually laughs. He doesn’t remember the last time he genuinely laughed, and it feels great.

“A movie?” Jim suggests, and Bones smiles.

“I’d like that.”

**Author's Note:**

> The heliocentric theory is the theory that has been proven about our solar system- that the planets orbit the sun, rather than everything orbiting the Earth. This time, it's Bones coming back to Jim, the Earth back to the sun, hence the heliocentric theory. I have two more theories in mind to use, and then we'll see what else I can come up with, or if I want to wrap it up.


End file.
